Spiraling Decline
by Gazara12
Summary: Following a Tidal Wave in Seattle, and a terrorist attack on Roseville High School, the BCB cast's lives spin out of control. Will they be able to control this spiraling decline, or will they descend in to destruction?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The tidal wave struck Seattle at approximately 9:00 am on Saturday, June 11th. The wave crashed directly in to the city, wiping it out to the man. Skyscrapers were levelled, trees uprooted, and blood spilled. The capital of Washington State was gone within the hour. In its place was a cesspit of mud, blood, and grief. There was minor damage all down the west coast, but Victoria and Vancouver were spared, as the west coast of Vancouver Island took the worst of the wave.

The news first flashed up on Mike's iPhone in the form of a tweet on his twitter feed… "HOLY SHIT SEATTLE IS GONE." Confused, the grey cat had gone on a news search, and found the shocking news. In a state of disbelief, he had shown it to Paulo by the lockers.

"Hey man, I don't give a shit," the orange and white cat had yawned, putting a hand in front of his mouth. "Seriously, no one cares about goddamn Seattle. It's sorta like… the mute kid of the states."

"Actually," Sue called from across the hall, "I think Blasto is made in Seattle. Starbucks is from there too, right?"

Paulo turned at her for a few seconds, aghast. He then turned back to Mike, his face the picture of horror, and said, "Oh my god, Seattle's gone."

He then turned and stumbled off, muttering "Seattle's gone, Blasto is gone… It's all gone… hee hee hee…"

Mike stared after the clearly deranged orange cat, blinked a few times, and then shook his head to clear it. He then checked his iPhone for the time - 2:15 – and then stuffed it in his scarf, because that was the only place he really _had_ to keep it.

Sue could swear she heard him mutter something about insane people as he ran off to his English class.

* * *

><p>"The disaster in Seattle," intoned the English teacher as Mike walked in to the room, a minute and a half late, after having run like hell to reach his class on time, "is due to an earthquake that hit the west coast five days prior to the wave. It is of utmost importance that we help the… few survivors. Michael, why are you late for class?"<p>

The grey cat felt his fur heat up with embarrassment, and stammered, "I'm sorry, I was reading about the tidal wave in Seattle, and I lost track of time."

The teacher studied him for a moment, then nodded, and said, "Right. Sit down, then."

Mike took his seat, and braced himself for the end of a day full of classes being cancelled to talk about the disaster. It was awful, but he'd heard enough the third or fourth time. This was his 7th time that day, and he just honestly did not want to hear about it again. Paulo was just ignorant, which was probably why he hadn't known before. The grey Korat rested his head on his arms, and lowered his eyes to gaze absentmindedly at his desk.

"Now, approximately 3.4 million people were killed by the wave…"

Mike stared at the scratches on his desk in boredom. They seemed to read "To ask him or not?" or something along those lines. He squinted at them, and traced it with his finger. The handwriting seemed vaguely familiar, but he wasn't sure exactly where to place it. He'd seen it somewhere before though.

"Mike?"

The grey cat turned towards the voice, and saw Daisy staring at him with an eyebrow slightly raised, as if asking a question.

"Mike, are you alright?" the cream cat whispered to him under her breath.

"Yeah, I'm alright," he whispered back. "Just tired and bored."

"Oh, alright… if you say so," Daisy murmured, and she turned back to the teacher, a slightly apprehensive look now adorning her face. Mike stared at the words for a few more minutes, and then became bored with them, and glanced up at the board. The words "Tsunami in Seattle" seemed to swim in front of him, and he buried his face in his arms.

_I need to sleep,_ he thought to himself, groaning internally, _and stop hearing about a natural disaster on the other end of the country._

The phone suddenly rang, and the teacher stopped to tentatively pick up the phone. She held the device to her ear, and said slowly, "Hello? This is room 409. I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of class right now, and I-"

She was cut off by a buzz of speech from the other end, and she paled. There was another burst of chatter from the other end, and she stammered, "I…I'm sorry, I can't give you what you want."

Mike had perked up, and was now staring attentively at his teacher, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. What the hell was she talking about, and who was on the other side?

The teacher hung up the phone, and, sweat dripping down her brow, making her fur stick out at odd angles, called out, "Class dismissed," and collapsed at her desk. As the class got up and filed out, Mike could have sworn he heard a wracking sob from the huddled form.

_What's going on?_

* * *

><p>Mike met Paulo and Lucy talking by the lockers about their English class. Paulo was poking his chest in a dramatic fashion, as if recounting some kind of poetry. As the grey cat approached them, he could hear Paulo reciting a line from something that sounded Shakespearean, which he knew their class was studying in English.<p>

"These violent delights have violent ends  
>And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,<br>Which as they kiss consume."

"Wow, Paulo," Mike said as he approached the pair, "I didn't know you knew any Shakespeare. Where's that from?"

Paulo twirled around, saw who it was, and relaxed slightly. He rubbed the back of his head, grinning in an abashed sort of way, and said, "Uh, it's from Romeo and Juliet. Act three, part two, or something like that. I don't know, I've sort of just started picking up on this stuff."

"That's pretty cool," Mike said, "Have you read anything else by him?"

"Er, not really, no, I haven't."

"Heh, fruitcake," Lucy sniggered behind a hand she'd raised to her mouth to hide the smirk growing there. Mike thought that he'd spin around and kill her, but Paulo just lowered his ears in a sort of sad way, as if he knew she was right. Mike frowned slightly, and intoned, "Hey, Lucy, don't make fun of him, Shakespeare is awesome."

"Of course _you'd_ say that, you're the biggest fruitcake of 'em all," Lucy teased, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Listen, I've got something to tell you."

As Mike filled Paulo and Lucy in on what had happened with his teacher, Paulo's brow furrowed, and he said, "That's really weird."

"It probably doesn't mean anything," Lucy muttered, "This isn't an adventure novel or a comic book – there aren't secret plots with terrorists, or superpowers. It was probably just her tax creditor, or something anti-climatic like that. Nothing to freak out over."

"Awww, you're no fun," Mike and Paulo whined together in unison. Paulo then glanced at a watch he had on his left wrist, and said, "Jesus, guys, I've got to go home, I want to have as much time home as possible. Catch you guys later."

Paulo wandered off, and Mike shouldered his backpack, opening his locker. Suddenly, a little note written on pink paper fluttered out of the slat of his locker that it had been stuffed in to. Lucy looked at it with a sudden sadness in her eyes that hadn't been there before, and suddenly, she found she couldn't quite look Mike in the eye.

"Another love letter, huh?" She said quietly, staring at the pink note.

"Uh, I don't think so," The grey cat said, staring at the page he'd just picked up from the floor quizzically. "I think it's some sort of a death threat, actually."

Lucy's ears pricked, and she frowned, staring intently at the little pink page, still not meeting Mike's eyes. "Well, what does it say?" she ventured, slightly more abrasively than before, staring at the paper like she hoped it would burst in to flames.

"To Mike, and any others to whom it may pertain,

"Get out, now. Do not be in the school at 4:30pm, when it shall be brought down in fire and brimstone. The clock shall no longer read, and the bell shall no longer ring. Roseville High shall be cast to the depths, and I ask that you are not here when it happens.

"Get out.

"-Anonymous"

Mike glanced up from the page at Lucy, and saw her focusing very hard on psychically igniting the pink paper. The Korat folded the page, put it in his scarf, and then said, "Well then… we'd best go home, eh?"

Lucy nodded wordlessly, and the duo stood up, and made their way out of the school.

* * *

><p>As Mike and Lucy were walking through the park, Mike glanced at his iPhone. 4:28pm. A mere two minutes left until whatever was to happen at the school happened. The Korat lead Lucy up to a huge oak tree planted at the top of a tall, wind-swept hill. Lucy frowned, and muttered, "Trees are boring," but offered only token resistance as Mike sat down at the base, staring down across the park to the far off highschool.<p>

"I wonder what's going to happen," fretted the grey cat, staring down at the clock-towered building in the distance, leaning his back against the large, old oak tree's trunk. Lucy shot him a sharp look, and growled, "Nothing's going to happen, Mike. It's probably just some prank. I-"

"…Lucy?"

"Yes?"

"…It's 4:30."

Lucy's face paled slightly – which was hard for a white-furred cat to do – And she turned back to the school. There was a slight rumbling sound in the distance, and then the whole ground seemed to rock as a plume of smoke shot up in the distance. A shining pillar of fire lit up the sky for about five seconds, and then dissipated. In its place was a sucking noise, and anything in a one mile radius was sucked in to the vacuum the explosion had created.

Roseville High School had been blown up in what appeared to be an explosive terrorist attack.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The truck swung around the corner, heading forward at full throttle. Inside of it were two army officers, and four police officers. The three cats and dog that sat in the back of the truck were out of uniform – They weren't part of the crew going to put out the fire at the high school, and sweep the immediate area. They were on a very different mission.

Search and Destroy.

They had received their orders from the President himself – to try and find the terrorists locally, and destroy them at all costs. They were to interrogate everyone in the town until they found who the hell was responsible for the explosive attack, and had executed them in a spectacular and covert way. After all, assassins were not officially approved of in the United States.

And assassins were what these men were.

"We're almost at the safe house," General MacMillan muttered, glancing intermittingly between a GPS in his dashboard, and the road ahead of him. "Another five minutes or so, and we'll be there."

"Damn straight," muttered one of the cops, and MacMillan's partner gave the man a stern glance. Ahead of them was a huge warehouse, boarded up at the front. The small lot at the back, however, was still open, and the General backed the van into it.

"All right," he called as he threw open his door and jumped out. "You men stay in there while we check this place out. Lieutenant, come with me."

His fellow army man nodded, and got out of the passengers seat. His gun rose from where it hung at his side by a strap up in to a ready position, and with a pause, he readied himself to follow General MacMillan in to the darkness of the abandoned warehouse.

"We don't have all day, Lieutenant Minuk."

"Er, right, right, sorry. I'll be right there," The Lieutenant stammered as he made his way after the General in to the dark warehouse. The sudden extinguishing of all light sent a tremor down his spine, and almost involuntarily he shuddered. The gun he held steady could be detected to shake slightly as he walked a couple of feet behind the General.

"Now," MacMillan mused, "where the devil is the light switch?"

Following a few minutes of searching, Minuk found it, and with a call to the General, he flicked it on. With a series of bumps and groans, the light panels far above their heads came on section by section. Soon, the whole decayed warehouse was flooded with light, making it equally lit to the sunny outside.

"Right, Lieutenant, you start making this place liveable," growled MacMillan, stomping towards the door. "I'll go get the cop boys out of the van. Make sure you don't bring any shelves down on yourself."

The General strolled out, and pulled the back of the van open, to reveal the four policemen lounging inside, looking incredibly bored and eating from the bag of donuts they'd brought with them.

"Right, you fruitcakes, get up, get inside that warehouse, and make it liveable. When you're done, meet me back here. I'll be in the van, plotting what we know. Well, what're you waiting for? Move!"

The policemen scrambled to their feet, made clumsy salutes – not being trained men, they'd not had the hours of discipline of an army man – and rushed out of the van in order to prepare the base. MacMillan watched them go, and then sighed to himself, partially of frustration, and partially of nostalgia.

"Now, damn it, what have we got?"

The General pulled out a small cabinet, and placed it on the hard gravel ground. He crouched down next to it, and pulled open the top drawer. Pulling a green folder out of it, he leaned against the back of the van, and began to read.

* * *

><p>"Geez, this is heavy."<p>

One of the policemen dropped his end of a four-poster bed on to the ground, and scowled darkly. They'd found four of the beds in a storage room for some strange reason and were now lugging them out. The intricate wooden carvings on them seemed to almost scream "ancient", but they were treating them like they were made of steel.

One of the policemen slumped on the bed frame, drenched in sweat. Glancing towards the door, he muttered, "I wonder why the General ain't in here with us, huh?"

Lieutenant Minuk glowered at him, and said, "General MacMillan is one of the best detectives in the country. He needs to be focusing on the case, not on moving beds. Don't be so damn selfish. Now get up and help us!"

The policeman stared at Minuk for a minute in shock, and then grunted, and got up to help. The heavy work continued for approximately another half hour before all four beds were out, as well as a cot and a couch.

"How… convenient," Minuk muttered, surveying the work with a critical eye. "Alright, men, meet General MacMillan outside. He'll talk to you about what we're going to do. Understand?"

"Yes sir!"

The policemen filed out, and Minuk allowed himself a small grin.

_This is going to be interesting…_

* * *

><p>Mike stumbled over his doorstep, wide eyed and panicked. He made his way in to the living room, and collapsed on the sofa, totally out of breath. About a minute later, Lucy followed him in, being substantially slower than the athletic cat.<p>

"Wh… why did you leave… me behind, jerkface?" panted Lucy, glaring at Mike. "Don't run so… so fast next time."

"Sorry," growled Mike, his breath already coming back, and with it some degree of sarcasm. "Next time I see my school _blow up_, I'll make sure to slow down for you! It's not my fault you're so slow!"

"Yeah, but… but it _is_ your fault that I… I couldn't keep pace with you," the white cat panted, hissing softly at Mike.

"Hah, please," Mike snorted, getting up. The look on his face was one mixed with confusion and anger. "You're totally under-reacting here, Lucy. Why is it that all you care about is the fact that I didn't slow down for you. There's been some kind of attack, and all you care about is my speed. Our school just _blew up_, and all you care about is being at my pace!"

Mike stomped closer to Lucy, and yelled, "People have _died, and all you care about is yourself!_"

Lucy had jumped back at the first yell, and at the final one, her eyes brimmed with water. Her eyebrows shot down, and in a voice filled with sadness, she said, "I'm sorry for wanting to be with you when people I'm friends with may have died. I'm sorry for coming to you when I need comfort. I guess you're not the right person to come to with my problems."

Lucy turned, and with the tears breaking their restraints, she started to storm out of the room.

"…Lucy. Wait."

Lucy turned, and saw that Mike's face had gone blank, as if he were internally struggling over what to do. A pained look crossed his face, and in a sort of strangled half-whisper, he said, "…Lucy, please don't leave…"

"Why?" Lucy yelled at him, and Mike flinched, his sensitive hearing combined with his already fragile state causing a cacophony in his head. The Korat seemed to struggle for words, and then finally, as if it were causing him a great amount of pain to say, he whispered, "I… need you here. I can't handle this by myself."

Lucy stared at him for a moment, and then whispered, "…Alright." She then walked quietly over to the sofa, and dropped down on it lightly, staring at the television set that lay in front of it.

"So," she said, still staring at the blank screen. "What are we going to do?"

* * *

><p>Paulo was lying across his couch, eating out of a tube of Pringles, and watching one of those lame 5:00 reality shows that no one really cares about. He was just about to reach his apex of boredom, the reality show suddenly jumped to a news report, and Paulo straightened out, interest flashing in his eyes.<p>

"This update fresh from Roseville, the high school there appears to have been subject to a _terrorist attack_ of some sort. As of yet there appear to have been no casualties, but medics are still searching the scene. There was extensive damage done to the school building, and a rough damage estimate is conservatively said to be at about $4 million."

"_What?_" Paulo exclaimed as he heard the news. His eyes widened as a picture of the devastated, burned-out shell of the high school flashed on the screen. The high school looked as if it had been burned to a crisp – which, in a sense, it had. Only the left wing appeared to be untouched – though that was just the exterior.

"As of yet, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, but militant group 'Phrama Met' is suspected. The Ministry of Defence has declined to make a comment, as has the President. The Board of Education has however released a statement saying that terrorism will not stand in the way of education, and that classes will continue as normal on Monday."

"God," Paulo hissed under his breath, "They're insane. School, in that heap?"

* * *

><p>The four policemen lined up in front of General MacMillan, who looked at each of them in turn with a stern face. He then turned to the filing cabinet, and said, "Gentlemen, until we catch those responsible for this heinous act, this cabinet will be your bible. You will not defile it in any way. You will not put frivolous information in it. This is need-to-know only, and is the pivotal information of our search. You will <em>live<em> by this cabinet. Do I make myself clear?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Right then, take an hour off, and go make those beds of yours liveable. I'll be taking the couch, and Lieutenant Minuk will be taking the cot. Hurry up – if we don't catch these sonuvabitches, they may actually kill someone next time. Children. Teenagers. Innocent people. We cannot allow this to happen. So go and make your beds. Dismissed."

As the policemen walked off, General MacMillan's brow furrowed as he thought over the information he had read and noted in the green folder. From the information he had received, he had narrowed the suspicion down to five or six people who may have been responsible for the explosion.

"Minuk's not going to like this," he muttered to himself. "They're all teenagers."


End file.
